Live results: Wins in Alaska, Washington keep Sanders campaign viable

Sen. Bernie Sanders handily defeated Hillary Clinton in the Washington state and Alaska caucuses Saturday, infusing his underdog campaign with critical momentum and bolstering his argument that the race for the Democratic nomination is not a foregone conclusion.

Sanders found a welcome tableau in the largely white and liberal electorates of the Pacific Northwest, where just days after routing Clinton in Idaho he won another resounding victory in Washington. The Associated Press declared him the winner after early results showed him beating Clinton by more than 50 percentage points. In Alaska, he had a nearly 60-point lead.

Washington, with 101 delegates in play, was a vital state for Sanders, whose prospects of capturing the nomination dimmed after double-digit losses to Clinton across the South and weak showings in delegate-rich Ohio, Florida and North Carolina this month.

At a rally in Madison, Wisconsin, late Saturday afternoon, Sanders assured more than 8,000 supporters that his victories had cleared a viable path to the nomination. “We knew from Day 1 that politically we were going to have a hard time in the Deep South,” Sanders said. “But we knew things were going to improve when we headed west.”

Noting the “huge” voter turnout – in Washington, Democratic Party officials estimated more than 200,000 people participated Saturday, close to the record set in 2008 – he told the crowd, “We are making significant inroads into Secretary Clinton’s lead.”

The victories in Washington and Alaska, which awarded 16 delegates Saturday, slightly narrow the gulf with Clinton in the quest for the 2,382 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. As of Saturday evening, Clinton had roughly 280 more so-called pledged delegates, who are awarded based on voting, and 440 more superdelegates – party leaders and elected officials – than Sanders.

But the wins are likely to bestow on the Sanders campaign a surge of online donations with which to buy advertising in the expensive media markets of New York and Pennsylvania, which hold primaries next month. The victory will also embolden Sanders to stay in the race and continue challenging Clinton on her ties to Wall Street and her foreign policy record.

Hawaii Democrats also voted Saturday, awarding 25 delegates through a “presidential preference poll,” a hybrid event in which voters showed up at a scheduled meeting, like a caucus, but voted by secret ballot, like a primary.

Republicans did not hold any contests Saturday. The next nominating battle for both parties will be the April 5 primaries in Wisconsin, followed by the April 9 Democratic caucuses in Wyoming, another contest that plays to Sanders’ strengths.

His victories Saturday were not unexpected; both Washington and Alaska have relatively low percentages of the black and Latino voters who have bolstered Clinton’s campaign this year, and he has done well in states holding caucuses.

But the results also highlighted the uphill climb Clinton would face in winning over the young and liberal voters who have flocked to the Vermont senator, and who often express concerns about her fundraising and speechmaking practices.

On Saturday morning, the auditorium at Eckstein Middle School in North Seattle burst with more than 1,400 caucusgoers holding lattes, pushing strollers and wearing “H” or “Bernie” lapel pins. Bleachers were set up onstage to accommodate the crowd.

“This is what democracy looks like,” Janet Miller, the caucus organizer, said from the auditorium’s stage.

Sanders won that precinct Saturday, and many others. “I appreciate Bernie’s fervor and honesty,” said Ian Forrester, a 25-year-old barista and rock musician who caucused for Sanders. “We’ve all seen the poor and the middle class suffer during this economic downfall, and we need someone who cares about them, not about corporations.”

The Sanders campaign blanketed Washington with $1 million in ads. Sanders found a sweet spot of support among Seattle’s young voters. A video clip of his rally Friday, just over the state line in Portland, Oregon, went viral after a delicate songbird perched on his podium, inspiring the Twitter hashtag #BirdieSanders. “I think there may be some symbolism here,” Sanders said to a roar of applause.

Clinton will have a chance to regain momentum, and a wash of delegates, when the Democratic primary moves to her adoptive home state, New York, on April 19. Her national campaign headquarters is in Brooklyn; on Saturday, Sanders opened an office in the borough’s Gowanus neighborhood, just a few miles from where he grew up.

Lately on the campaign trail, Clinton, bracing for some losses in the caucus states, seemed to have grown annoyed by the commentary from political rivals that Sanders’ campaign has drawn far more enthusiastic supporters. “I totally respect the passion of my opponent’s supporters, absolutely respect it,” Clinton said while campaigning in Washington on Tuesday.

“And here’s what I want you to know,” she continued, “I have, as of now, gotten more votes than anybody else, including Donald Trump. I have gotten 2.6 million more votes than Bernie Sanders” and “have a bigger lead in pledged delegates, the ones you win from people voting, than Barack Obama had at this time in 2008.”

Clinton has shifted her focus and her words to taking on the Republicans in November, but given Sanders’ influence over liberal voters she would need in a general election, she has been cautious how she discusses domestic and foreign policy.

With Sanders’ focus on income inequality and taking on Wall Street, Clinton has continued to reach out to working-class voters, including holding a rally Tuesday at a machinists and aerospace workers union hall at the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington.

“I was made an honorary machinist some years ago, so I feel a particular connection here to my brothers and sisters in the machinists,” she told the crowd. “I am no person new to this struggle. I am not the latest flavor of the month. I have been doing this work day in and day out for years.”

She also knocked Sanders for not supporting the Export-Import Bank, the government-backed agency that provides low-interest loans to help companies doing international business, like Boeing, and which Sanders and some Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, have opposed as “corporate welfare.”

And as Clinton sought to demonstrate her toughness and preparedness to be commander in chief in response to the terrorist attacks in Brussels on Tuesday, she also had to avoid inflaming liberal primary voters who still associate her with her 2002 Senate vote to authorize the Iraq War.

On Wednesday, Clinton said the responses to the Brussels attacks by the leading Republican candidates, Trump and Cruz, amounted to “reckless actions” that would alienate U.S. allies, demonize Muslims and embolden Russia.

Meanwhile, Sanders ran an emotional 90-second ad in Hawaii, called “The Cost of War,” featuring Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a veteran from Hawaii who reminded viewers that Sanders had voted against the Iraq War.

“Bernie Sanders will defend our country and take the trillions of dollars that are spent on these interventionist, regime change, unnecessary wars and invest it here at home,” an impassioned Gabbard said, against scenic views of Hawaii.

Foreign policy was what motivated Warren Jones, 65 and a retired software engineer, to caucus for Sanders on Saturday in Seattle. “She was wrong on Iraq, and proved she didn’t learn from that experience, but was wrong on Libya, too,” Jones said. “I think in large part she is responsible for ISIS, though there’s plenty of blame to go around.”

This story was originally published March 26, 2016 at 12:52 PM with the headline "Live results: Wins in Alaska, Washington keep Sanders campaign viable."